Realism and Restraint
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
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With Iran's foreign minister ruling out concessions or any reopening of Hormuz, one analyst argues the only way to stop Tehran's attacks on shipping...
The US-Iran war has settled into a stalemate Trump can only break by sending in ground troops, argues Dr. Robert Kelly of Pusan National...
Iraq's new prime minister spent a week in Washington; Syria's president met Trump at the NATO summit. Frantzman reads the pattern: one envoy for...
Xi's first Pyongyang visit in seven years, a ratified Russia pact, and a declaration that the arsenal is permanent: Andrew Latham on why the...
For all the talk of spending targets, the Ankara NATO summit's real work happened elsewhere. Europe is being handed responsibility for NATO's conventional defense...
Western analysts fixate on North Korea's missiles. The real danger is speed — a mass artillery-and-missile salvo in the war's first hours, backed by...
The second Trump administration is reviewing America's military footprint in Europe, and the worst-case outcome is a full withdrawal. Andrew Michta argues that would...
The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is being judged on whether it cools tensions in the Persian Gulf. Strategic-studies scholar Andrew Michta argues that's the...
Nothing was holding one of America's most advanced weather satellites to its fixture but gravity and friction — because another crew had borrowed the...
China is no longer experimenting with aircraft carriers. With Fujian now in service and more carriers expected, Beijing is building the foundation for a...
China's J-15 'Flying Shark' — the fighter that made its carriers viable — exists because Beijing bought an unfinished Su-33 prototype left in Ukraine...
Russia has modified its ballistic missiles to dive and maneuver in the terminal phase, evading Ukraine's interceptors, Reuben Johnson reports — a shift one...
Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries have spread the fuel crisis into the countryside just as harvest begins, one analyst argues, with farmers...
Two tankers loaded with Saudi crude reversed course in the Red Sea — without being fired on — after the Houthis threatened any ship...
Social Security’s funding gap is not a forecast — it is arithmetic. The size of the shortfall is known, the levers that can close...
The Memorandum of Understanding that paused the fighting has collapsed, Farley writes, because it never settled the status of the Strait of Hormuz or...
A New York Times analysis warns the US-Iran war sits on a 'knife's edge,' with experts urging a diplomatic off-ramp before it spirals beyond...
Mediators have passed Iran a proposal for a ten-day ceasefire, Reuters reports, and Tehran's foreign ministry confirms diplomacy is moving — even as strikes...
Berlin is positioning to become Kyiv's chief postwar patron. Andrew Michta on the German-Polish competition for Ukraine — and why the strained Warsaw-Kyiv partnership...
Growth at 0.4 percent and a blown deficit look like pressure toward peace. Latham's case: four years of war built a political economy with...
Last year North Korea's newest destroyer rolled over at its own launch, and the world assumed the program was finished for years. Instead Pyongyang...
The KN-23, North Korea's version the Russian Iskander missile, showed up to fight in the Ukraine war. And it isn't the same platform as...
On May 21, 2025, a brand-new North Korean destroyer rolled over and partially capsized at its own launch ceremony — with Kim Jong Un...
Fake Russian IDs, Orders Never to Be Captured, and 50% Casualties: Inside North Korea’s Secret War in Ukraine The Russian Army has sustained nearly...
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
The hospital at which I work offered antibody serology tests to all medical staff last Wednesday. The test detects IgG, the immunoglobulin that appears in...
In a post last month, we raised concerns about the unforeseen and underappreciated costs of expanding export controls on U.S. technology. Either those concerns fell on...
